NEW YORK (AP) – A man so fascinated with the city’s public transit system that he’s turned his life into a train wreck is in trouble again.

Darius McCollum, who became a New York sensation when he commandeered a subway at age 15, was arrested Saturday after police found him in a secure area of Manhattan’s Columbus Circle station wearing clothing that resembled a transit worker’s uniform.

The arrest marked the 23rd time that the 43-year-old had been arrested for pretending to be a crucial cog in the transit grid that makes New York move.

Over the years, he has donned MTA uniforms and cheerfully collected fares, cleared trash from tracks, put out underground fires.

But most of all, he liked to take off actually driving the buses and trains. In 1981, the teenager made headlines by taking the controls of a subway full of passengers and piloting it downtown to the World Trade Center.

Hardly just a youthful prank, it was the first of many forbidden rides. By the mid-1990s, frustrated Transit Authority officials posted thousands of wanted posters in trains and stations so riders could report McCollum sightings. But most riders who ran into him found him simply friendly and helpful.

On Saturday, officers of the NYPD’s Transit Queens Task Force spotted the infamous impersonator as he entered a secure area.

He was wearing a hardhat and the typical blue T-shirt and pants of track workers, and carried a flashlight and gloves with a Transit Authority logo. Police said he also had “written material containing knowledge of the transit system.” McCollum was charged with criminal impersonation, criminal trespassing and criminal possession of burglar tools.

He was awaiting arraignment on Saturday.

In a statement, the New York Transit Authority thanked the officers who made the arrest, saying, “It is not difficult to imagine how much harm could be caused by someone impersonating a New York City Transit worker.”

Sympathizers claim McCollum’s nocturnal infiltrations stem from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism typically reflected in obsessive behavior.

At a 2003 arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, the 78th Street Theatre Lab of New York mounted a play called “Boy Steals Train” – described as “pointing a shaming collective finger at a judiciary that refuses to recognize Darius’s condition.”

The play, theater critic Joyce McMillan said, “recognises McCallum’s plight but celebrates his ability to see magic in something as banal as a subway system.”

His story was also made into a BBC radio play.

One of McCollum’s lawyers argued he’s insane and not responsible for his obsession.

But he apparently believes he’s right on track.

“I am not insane!” he once told The New York Times in an interview at Rikers Island jail. “I’m just the average guy who likes to help out.”

Yet, he seems unable to stop himself.

In 1997, he was arrested after flashing a stolen badge to sign out a public transit truck and taking it for a ride – and again the next night, and the next, and the next, until he was busted.

In 2000, authorities said he pulled a subway emergency brake during rush hour so he could come to the rescue as a supervisor in regulation blue uniform. Earlier that year, he took a joy ride in another vehicle.

In 2004, wearing an orange reflector vest and hard hat, McCollum entered a Long Island Rail Road yard posing as a safety consultant and asked representatives of a locomotive company how to operate a new type of engine, prosecutors said.

He was sentenced to three years in prison for trying to steal the locomotive after pleading guilty to attempted grand larceny.

Released from the Sing Sing Correctional Facility north of New York in 2006, he was imprisoned again for breaking parole after being found in possession of railroad property.

In his book, “American Normal: The Hidden World of Asperger Syndrome,” author Lawrence Osborne asked: “Can anyone really understand what role subway trains play in Darius McCollum’s inner tale?”

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On the Net:

New York City Transit: http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/nyct/index.html

Metropolitan Transportation Authority: http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/index.html

AP-ES-06-14-08 1651EDT